Thrilled by the Transformation I Perceived in President Obama this Morning

( – promoted by lowkell)

I was a huge fan of Obama’s for the year before his inauguration. Much of the time since the first few months of his presidency, I’ve been intensely frustrated and disappointed by what I see as his weakness in dealing with an opposition determined to make him fail, regardless of the damage to the nation. Today, I believe I saw something that says he’s undergone a real and basic transformation, a movement into a place of deep strength.

The way he stood his ground during the recent standoff with the Republicans in Congress showed he’d learned a lesson. That’s important, but it doesn’t necessarily show a transformation: the idea that “this time we don’t pay ransom to hostage-takers” can represent a decision, undertaken at a level of conscious strategy, and does not necessarily show a deeper movement of heart and soul away from weakness and into a place of strength.

But here the President was, talking about his signature accomplishment precisely because of the problems that have beset its launch, and the President seemed to be strong in a way that comes from the core, strong in a way that I’ve not seen much in the past.

In the past, I’ve often thought that he was good at ACTING as if he was strong, but that he didn’t really own that strength. Today I felt that here was a man who had settled into the fact that he is President of the United States, that he can prevail over his enemies, that he can make good things happen, that he is comfortable in the possession of not only the power of his office but also his inner power.

Admittedly, this is but an intuition– it’s me processing the intangible clues that one person can read as another is expressing the state of his being. Admittedly also, what I believe I saw today might not be a permanent transformation.

But I’d bet at 2:1 odds that what I saw was real, and that it represents a real shift in the president’s possession of the deeper powers of his self. And that shift, if it is real, is wonderful news for America.

You can judge for yourself. The video of his talk can be seen above.